News

Fred T. Jane is a turn-of-the-century artist who doesn’t make much of an impact in the sort of standard reference works that line the office walls of serious auctioneers and dealers.

IF his 34th Cheshire Autumn Antiques and Fine Art Fair at Tatton Park over the weekend of September 4 to 7 was an indicator then Robert Bailey’s Harrogate fair should turn over nicely.

ALL 43 exhibitors at Caroline Penman’s Petersfield Antiques Fair enjoyed some business at the Festival Hall from September 5 to 7 with a majority reporting good sales.

Consigned to Sworders by a dealer who had bought it when clearing a London office, this George III patent extending mahogany dining table created a massive amount of interest when offered by the Stansted Mountfitchet auctioneers on September 9. “When it arrived it was so obviously a good thing,” said specialist Guy Schooling who found two potential candidates for the maker, S. Martin, whose name and the inscription Invenit et Fecit appeared on a brass plaque applied to the base.

COMING in well over estimate, the auctioneers team trounced their dealer opponents with a 6-1 scoreline in the first annual Dealers v Auctioneers football match.

Laure de Beauvau-Craon has announced that she will step down as chief executive of Sotheby’s France at the end of the year. She has held the post since 1991 and will be remembered for successfully lobbying the European Commission to bring about the abolition of the domestic auction monopoly of France’s commissaires-priseurs.

With the retirement at the end of this month of the Alnwick auctioneer Ian Robertson, Newcastle-upon-Tyne auctioneers Anderson & Garland are to assume control of the 40-year-old business.